Now more than ever, the lyrics of your song “Atemuda” are real to us. In that song, you admonished that we live with the end in mind. You admonished that we do not live as though life is all about eating and drinking. “It is appointed unto man once to die and after that judgement” you quoted. You however failed to tell us that you would leave us soon. You left us shocked and pensive, You caused memories to come rushing through our minds, You left us in tears, but most importantly, You forced us to take stock of our lives. In death, you reechoed this very important truth: It is appointed unto man once to die and after death judgement. No man knows the day nor the hour; Live with the end in mind.

To the world, you were a pastor and a musician, but to us you were so much more. You were our father, friend, confidant, teacher and counsellor. Whenever you were in a room with us, our smiles and hysterical laughters were assured. You had a way of getting all of us to feel comfortable around you. You would always be the one to see through our generic “I’m fines”. You could get us talking faster than anyone could. You always had snippets of information and sound counsel to share.

You taught us integrity and humility. You taught us to let our “Yes” be “Yes” and our “No” “No”. We never doubted you if you said a Yes or No because we knew you meant it every time. You used some “Gospel Musicians” from your childhood who were drunkards as examples, when you tried to show us how failing to uphold one’s moral principles belittled whatever message one was trying to put across. Whenever we so much as suggested that you were a “star”, You would say “No, I like to think of myself as a moon. Like the moon I have no light of my own, I only reflect God’s light” You reflected the light so well that everyone saw it and was attracted to its brightness. Whenever we got caught up in the aesthetics of a song, you made sure we were pointed to what was important. You had a way of making the lyrics of the song come alive. It was always about God.

One day, we came to you with a question. “Unco Dan, why do you only release an album every five years? You write a song every other day”. We know this because we heard him sing them and he even wrote with us on occasion. “It is all about quality, not numbers or frequency”, you said. You insisted on quality in everything you did. If it had to be done, then it had to be done well or you would have whoever do it until it was done to specification. Most importantly, you taught us that quality didn’t always have to mean expensive. You would much rather organise to go and sing and evangelise in a Secondary School where you would receive nothing as payment than buy a new ipad for instance. You used your First Generation ipad to the end. You never once put money into buying flashy things. It had to be quality but it didn’t have to be expensive.

We consider ourselves privileged to have lived and known you in such close proximity. To have been the first ones to hear your music, to have written with you on occasion, to have been carried in your bosom as babies, to have been nurtured and cared for by you, to have met all your VIP friends.

Unco Dan, we miss you already. We miss coming to your room to worry you with plenty talking when you came home tired after your ministrations, we miss the car rides with you, we miss the days when you would gather us all in the boys-quarters and teach us songs, we miss staying up all night listening to and watching Gospel concerts, we miss your unannounced surprises, we miss your deep voice on the phone: “Shalom”, was almost always the first word you would say. Unco Dan, we miss you. We miss your hugs especially. You will always have a special place in all our hearts.

We are saddened by your passing but we are comforted by the fact that you lived your life with the end in sight. We can almost unmistakably hear the voice of The Master saying:

Well Done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord

Like the average Ghanaian, i frequently use the trotro and as a result I have had several trotro encounters. Some humorous others not so amusing. To those of you who may be wondering, “trotro” is the term by which most Ghanaians know the buses that ply our streets day and night, transporting passengers to and from their daily movements within the city. I just want to share briefly yesterday and today’s experiences.

So yesterday, the bus “loads” and takes off. A few minutes later on a journey that is supposed to last (give or take) an hour, a young man in the back remembers that he had left something at home and requests to get off. This he does without saying a word. The “mate” was also “unlooking” kraaa.

Barely 10 seconds later,

*exits mate’s head out the window in the usual trotro mate fashion* “Accra Accra Accra”

*The driver got angry and parked* “What is happening?” he demanded. The passengers told him that the mate charged the full fare from the other guy who had to get off so they wouldn’t let another person onto the bus. The driver got mad at the mate, blah blah blah. Eventually we let the woman get on but we didn’t allow her to pay the fare. “After all, what is good for the goose is equally good for the gander” the gray-haired man sitting next to me tried to explain. “Why should the mate get to charge double for the same seat on the same journey” he rationalized.

*ASIDE* Just in case you were wondering, “mate” is our very own Ghanaian term for the conductor.

My friends from Europe and all those other places would be surprised about this. In Holland, London, etc., if you forgot something at home and you had to go back and get it, You had to wait for the next stop and hopefully catch the next tram or bus back home. DON’T DREAM ABOUT A REFUND. NOBODY CARES EVEN IF YOU GOT ON THE WRONG TRAM. As long as you got on, better pay your 3Euros and wait for the next stop.

But then again, these monies go to the government and they would be pumped back into the system so i guess its easy to overlook. The Ghanaian transport system is mostly private owned and these “extra monies” would make its way into an individual’s pocket.

In Ghana, people want a refund if they didn’t get to use the service for which they paid. Perhaps, if the mate had charged the fare from the station to the junction where he got off, there would have been no protests.

Today’s occurrence was both funny and annoying. It reminded me of that expression I learnt back in school. First time I heard it, i was in JSS

Your rights end where another’s begins!

This young man, bless his heart, was sitting right behind me,on the back seat”. And like the pharisees, he prayed. He was LOUD. And he kept going on and on and on.

Let me say this, and in no uncertain terms that I, OSTWIN AWOLEBA ADDA, AM NOT AGAINST PRAYER IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER.

I BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF PRAYER

it would amaze you if you took a poll on the bus. 99.9% of the people would be Christians but we were equally annoyed by this guys behavior. I’m pretty sure most of us said our prayers before leaving the house. This guys misconduct was just unacceptable. I have prayed in a bus on occasion, that is not the way to go. You don’t disturb everyone if you need to pray in public. Especially not early in the morning on a trotro full of people going to work and quietly making plans as they go. Personally I was reading a book and i didn’t appreciate the rude interruption.

Lets learn to respect ourselves wherever we may find ourselves.

ESPECIALLY ON THE TROTRO. You don’t have a clue the kind of person it is who is sitting next to you.

Just the other day, there was a heavy downpour of rain. But that wasn’t what caught my attention.

What caught my attention was the WIND that accompanied the rain. Then there was the LIGHTNING as well as his noisy SCARY twin THUNDER.. I’m not talking about everyday wind. I mean WIND. The kind that made sure we slept in the dark yesterday (as electric poles came tumbling down) and a portion of our ceiling came off. Oh and just by the way the building was completed barely 3 months ago. I started to pray for Mercy. Hmmm.

My mind was drawn to that story in Exodus 19. Immediately, I grabbed my bible and read the story again. The Israelites, after being led by Moses out of Egypt into the wilderness of Sinai, had to go and meet God at the Mount of Sinai in order that the people of Israel would hear Him(God) speak.

The morning of the 3rd day of sanctification when God had commanded that the people come to the mount, there was lightning, thunder and a thick cloud upon the mount. And the voice of the trumpet was exceeding loud.

At this point in time the people were still in the camp but the Bible says the people TREMBLED…

This got me thinking.

You see, when it rains as heavily as it did yesterday, we get scared by common winds, lightning and the sound of thunder but we do not fear God as much. (LORD HAVE MERCY)

I don’t think my generation knows anything about the Fearfulness of God.

Just for God to come down and speak with His people, there had to be LIGHTNING, THUNDER and a THICK CLOUD on the mount. As if that wasn’t enough, the mount was SMOKING because the Lord descended on the mount in FIRE. And Bible says the smoke was as that of a furnace. And there was the long sounding trumpet that waxed louder and louder..

He asked Moses to set bounds for the mount because anyone (man or beast) who touched it would surely die.

God had initially asked Moses to sanctify the people BOTH on the first and second days. He also commanded that the people wash their clothes. He even commanded that husbands do not go at their wives…. Eiii!!!!

It wasn’t enough that people needed sanctification, even their clothes had to be washed before God could speak to them.

Today, we come into the church with all sorts of filth. We see church elders sleeping with young oblivious Christian sisters, we have choristers going to fornicate on Saturday night and yet showing up on Sunday morning and boldly mounting the stage in their short skirts to minister to God’s people, we have ushers/altar boys masturbating all night-through and then coming to hold around offering bags to receive the offerings of God’s holy people among all sorts of unspeakable things. We even hinder the presence of God from coming down because He(God) cannot be associated with anything unholy.

There was once a time when the ground would open and swallow up anyone who sinned INSTANTLY. There was no room for repentance.

Let us not let Jesus’s sacrifice be for naught.

You see, the God of yesterday hasn’t changed with the times.

GOD IS NOT DYNAMIC; HE CHANGEST NOT.

He is still the same yesterday, today and forever and He STILL DEMANDS that we sanctify ourselves before coming to His presence.

Yes, We are in the dispensation of the Spirit and GRACE and MERCY abounds.

But as Paul said, the abundance of GRACE shouldn’t be an excuse to sin(paraphrased).

A little boy loses his mum shortly after his dad is gone.
He moves in with an aunt who is too busy to accord him the attention he needs
He grows up not knowing happiness
With his parents passing, it was gone.

A young teenage girl gets dumped by her lover.
For a while, he had been the crux of her life.
She had shunned the old and failed to make new friends.
“Who needs friends when they’re in love”, she would tell herself.
With his going, she was left sad and alone.

A mother loses the father of her child.
He was everything to her;
A loving father, a confidant, leader, friend, lover and satisfaction.*moment of silence*
Their 3 year old keeps asking; “mummy, where is daddy?”
“You’ll see him soon”, she replies, turns the other way and sheds a tear.

A rich man with many friends begins to face some difficulty.
He turns to some of his friends for help and realizes there is no one supporting him.
He has to struggle all by himself to make ends meet.
Difficulty revealed that he actually had no friends.

When Jesus hung on the cross for you and I,
He had taken up our nature of sin;
So that by dying and resurrecting we might be reborn with Christ.
But God is a just and righteous God and CANNOT be associated with sin.
For the first (and perhaps last) time, “the holy trinity” was broken for mankind’s sake.
“Father, Father, why has thou forsaken me”, Jesus cried.

God’s whole plan for creating man is FELLOWSHIP.
But it is CLEAR that salvation is a one-man affair.

It is appointed for a man to die once and after death judgement.

“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling”, the bible says.
Make sure you’re ready when your time comes.

When The Master calls me home,I will be by my lonesome And so will you.

That 1st time I saw you.
I thought to myself as you walked by. “What a beauty!!”
I met you later that evening at the “Orange Party”
I wasn’t going to come, but I knew you’d be there.
I smiled at you and you smiled right back.
Mon cœur à tombe dans mon ventre
Somewhere in your smile, I forgot where I was
I looked in your green eyes and asked:
“Is that the real colour of your eyes?”
“What do you think”, you replied.
I really did not know what I was thinking.
I had lost my ability to reason.
In your presence I had failed to rediscover myself
Later I would ask myself:
“Dude, are you ok?”
“Get your act together” I chided on occasion.
One day, the fire alarm went off
As we exited the building, I caught a glimpse of you
There you stood on the lawn in your native apparel.
At this point I was toast.
I didn’t say a word, I only reached for my camera
As I got it in position, you started posing.
We were in total sync.

I had even forgotten about what was important
At least until my mother drew my attention. (Bless her heart)
“Is she a Christian?”
I was glad to find out that you are.
As I looked some more at your images, I began to notice the Potter’s handiwork.
He paid a lot of attention to the details.
And HE GOT EVERYTHING RIGHT.
Femme Africaine, tu es si belle.
The more I interacted with you, the more I couldn’t get you out of my head.
Indeed, your speech is seasoned with salt.
I started calling you “mon ange”.
Because, tu as l’air d’une princesse.

Albeit 2000miles later, I had begun to reason again.
I tried to convince myself to let go:
“Dude, you’re daydreaming;
She is in a world of her own”
I don’t know what we’ll do about this
But I had to let you know.

In the image of God man was made To be head of all that was made. Every single creature was by him named. Yet by woman his soul was forever maimed.

Then God sent HIS SON as propitiation To revive our LOVE relation On Calvary His blood was shed By whips, thorns and a spear He bled

Unto man He gave THE HOLY SPIRIT Worship me He says: IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH. For I am Spirit THE LIFE, THE WAY AND THE TRUTH!

He gave us Grace To counter the rebellion of the flesh With everyday’s measure renewed AFRESH Yet, His Grace we refuse to embrace.

Doesn’t the scripture say: Not by Might, Not by Power? Doesn’t the scripture say of them that believe: to them gave He the Power? Yet we CHOOSE to behave like the swine; We often seek renewal of God Then as if drawn by a cord We return to the mud.

How long will we stay in this cycle? How long will we remain objects of recycle? God made us for HIS use Not the devils’ misuse.